[drupal-docs] New book about Drupal?

[Charlie Lowe]

I had a chance to email with David Blakesley. Dave's been working a lot 
with Drupal over the last few months and also happens to be the editor 
and founder of Parlor Press:

http://www.parlorpress.com/

Dave would be interested in a book submission from this group and is 
willing to let us use some sort of CC licensing.

Since this is an academic press, the book would have to be peer 
reviewed, and it couldn't be a how to configure or write code for Drupal 
book. But Kieran's suggestion below is the type of book that could work. 
Suppose we put together a collection of articles that was about Internet 
culture and how it is changing, narratives where Drupal/the Drupal 
community is a key player in those changes. For example, I could imagine

* an essay by Zack Rosen and Neil Drumm about DeanSpace, a narrative 
describing it's formation and it's place within the Dean campaign

* a followup article about CivicSpace focusing on the future of 
political action on the Internet.

* a look at Firefox which focuses on the grassroots campaign initiated 
by spreadfirefox.

Note that the goal is to write about these things, about these stories 
of the Internet and Internet technologies, not primarily focusing on 
Drupal, but where Drupal is the main actor in these stories. In doing 
so, such a text would provide a slice of Internet history and, I think, 
communicate our excitement about Drupal and the innovative community 
which has formed around it.

Any other ideas?

Charlie

Kieran Lal wrote:
> When thinking about adopting a trend I tend to look back at human 
> history and makes bets based on things that seem inherent in our nature.
> 
> Love, Hate, Growth, War, Art, etc.
> 
> If I were going to write a book on Drupal, I'd write about communities.  
> They have always existed and likely always will.   PHPTemplate however, 
> has a limited lifetime.
> 
> I'd start with a history of this community, because that story will be 
> timeless.   Then I'd write about the types of communities that are 
> emerging to use these tools.  Communities that are undergoing disruptive 
> changes should be particularly interesting.  Politics, artists both have 
> the smell of a great overthrow of the powers that be.
> 
> Community members and community organizers want to know the principles 
> of building successful communities and how Drupal can assist them.  They 
> need decision criteria and choices.  But most of all they want the why's 
> behind a successful recipe.  One of my favorite technical books is 
> Essential COM by Don Box.  It's a great read, even though COM is not hot 
> anymore.  He explains eloquently the why of how Microsoft came to tackle 
> the challenges that unix wouldn't.   The why last's, where as COM 
> didn't.  What are the why's behind Drupal's current choices, that's a 
> story with real value.  Where did we lead, and where did  we follow, who 
> made those decisions.
> 
> If you write a page about the event module, how will you explain to the 
> editor that event module is getting a patch every few days.   You'll get 
> blasted when the book comes from the printers because it will be wrong.  
> In the future, I'll be walking along in the mall and see the book in the 
> $0.99 store.  Wow!  Drupal 5.7, that's so old, I can't believe we 
> actually had to use that stuff.
> 
> There are approximately less than 400 CVS accounts for Drupal right 
> now.  There are 6 billion people who are part of a community one way or 
> another.  
> 
> Leave the technical stuff to the docs team and, write the great 
> pragmatic Drupal narrative that needs to be told.
> 
> Cheers,
> Kieran
> 
> On Aug 9, 2005, at 9:15 AM, Laura Scott wrote:
> 
>> Count me in as one more person who sees a cultural revolution 
>> happening, in which Drupal is playing a part. And I think it would be 
>> a shame to not look at the possibilities.
>>
>> But like Jon who just replied as I was writing this, I think "Web 2.0" 
>> and "Blogging 2.0" are nonsensical -- the former especially, which 
>> seems more of a marketing strategy by big corps to sell their 
>> platforms. To me, it's rather ridiculous to try to attach release 
>> numbers to the continuous evolution of interactivity. And to add a 
>> number simply to say, "This isn't the web of the '90s," I think is an 
>> error. I know a lot of web pundits and developers have adopted the 
>> terms, but in the end it doesn't capture the kaizen of web evolution, 
>> and impiies that there actually is some sort of stable worldwide web 
>> in equilibrium, unchanging (and therefore safe to invest in).
>>
>> /rant
>>
>> That said, I wonder if the cultural present and the anticipated future 
>> of interactivity aren't a bit too big for a book ostensibly about Drupal.
>>
>> On the other hand, to make the book purely for developers I think 
>> misses the boat. There are aspects of administration that could and 
>> shoud be included. A discussion of creating and customizing 
>> phpTemplate themes I think could be one rather large chapter, at 
>> least. And then there are ways to use Drupal in applications -- as a 
>> blog, as a photoblog, as a business site, as a community site, as a 
>> campaign site, as a software distribution site, as a music store, and 
>> so on -- all with existing real-world examples.
>>
>> I also would like to submit the idea that -- assuming this is intended 
>> as a book printed on paper -- that the text then get posted as a wiki, 
>> so that it can become a living document as new releases come out, new 
>> hacks are invented, new modules are developed, new interactivity 
>> patterns of use create new demands on the software, etc.
>>
>> There seem to be plenty of volunteers. Please add me to the list of 
>> potential contributors. I could write or co-write on themes, and 
>> applications of Drupal to various uses.
>>
>> Laura
>> pingVision <http://pingv.com>
>>
>> Liza Sabater wrote:
>>> On Aug 09 2005, at 05:58, Jeremy Epstein wrote:
>>>
>>>> a) be focused towards developers - they're much more likely to be
>>>> interested in reading it than layman end-users;
>>>
>>> Completely disagree.
>>>
>>> Let me finish writing my notes about the BlogHer conference. If 
>>> anything BlogHer shows there a lot of smart and sophisticated 
>>> bloggers out there HUNGRY for technology like Drupal but they don't 
>>> know it even exists. I am actually saddened that nobody from the 
>>> community came to BlogHer to talk about Drupal or CivicSpace because, 
>>> especially in my panel, the product would have been perfect as a 
>>> topic of discussion.
>>>
>>> One more thing : The two most successful blogging companies were 
>>> co-founded by women. And these women focused on usability and 
>>> flexibility. Blogger was bought by Google. SixApart is right now the 
>>> biggest blogging company out there, with the capacity to have gobbled 
>>> up LiveJournal and spawn poliglot versions of TypePad.
>>>
>>> They are great tools for people coming into blogging but people like 
>>> Dooce [ www.dooce.com ], for example, need Drupal to manage the 
>>> communities that have evolved around them. She represents a whole 
>>> group of bloggers "graduating" into blogging 2.0.
>>>
>>> Heather told us during my panel that she closed comments and 
>>> trackbacks because of the trolls and spam attacks she was having. She 
>>> just could not manage the more than 500 comments a day coming at her. 
>>> But she has a posse of devoted readers that could have managed trolls 
>>> and kept house for her at Dooce.com if she had a tool like Drupal. 
>>> And if she cranked it up a notch with the tools of CivicSpace, she 
>>> could have "Dooced" maps of people connecting, networking. And this, 
>>> just for what a lot of you would derisively call a "mommyblog" -- my 
>>> thoughts about that are here 
>>> http://www.culturekitchen.com/archives/003210.html
>>>
>>> If you think Drupal is just for developers you have no understanding 
>>> of the cultural revolution that blogging has wrought. That revolution 
>>> was a metaphor in net art 10 years ago. What we are seeing here in 
>>> conferences like BlogHer and online in places like DailyKos, is a 
>>> cultural phenomenon agenced by the technology and changing how we are 
>>> living and forming communities online and off.
>>>
>>> My challenge to you as a developer is to take a step back and think 
>>> of yourself as the guy chipping flints off a rock in the cave. Think 
>>> of what that did to the development of humanity. You're the flint 
>>> chipper, blogs the spearhead. Look how easy and transparent the 
>>> development of that technology was. That's blogging 1.0. The question 
>>> now is what does blogging 2.0 look lik. That's what Drupal is poised 
>>> to be.
>>>
>>> Making the book just for developers would be like sticking that spear 
>>> in your own foot just because you can. Do you really want to hurt 
>>> yourself and limp around while others are running away with this 
>>> cultural revolution?
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Liza Sabater
>>>
>>> AIM - cultkitdiva
>>> SKYPE - lizasabater
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